Beachy's critique of Pietism largely follows the views of Robert Friedmann, who argued that European Pietism stressed an emotional personal experience that undermined the sober communal obedience of authentic Anabaptism.

Perhaps for these reasons we continue to see intriguing work published on Munster at a time when interest in the Radical Reformation seems to be waning, and when much of what is written on the subject comes from an increasingly sectarian perspective--in addition to the volume being reviewed here, Ralf Klotzer's excellent chapter in Brill's A Companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 1521-1700 (2007); a forthcoming work by James Stayer, Michael Driedger, and Willem de Bakker, provisionally entitled Bernhard Rothmann and the Reformation in Munster, 1530-1535; and, of course, parts of the wonderfully enigmatic novel Q, come immediately to mind.

We were interested in those things that escaped or exceeded the fight between the Reformation and counter-Reformation, what the popes on one side and the leaders of the magisterial Reformation on the other wanted to exclude from the field of possibilities: the social revolt of the German peasants, Anabaptism, the Free Spirit heresy, and all the other phenomena that threatened the order of things at its very root.

He looks at the movement called the Counter Reformation, Calvinism and how it played out in the various countries that embraced it, persecutions (including the Inquisition, the burning of witches, and the martyrdom of dissidents from both the Catholic and Lutheran churches), the Enlightenment, the Church of England, Lutheranism in Scandinavia, Methodism, church design, sermon style, music, art, and architecture, the effect of the printing press, biblical translations, Anabaptism, pietism, and more.

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